Say you have 1 million you MUST spend on housing. What would YOU buy?

A condo wth Lake views in Chicago?

A McMansion?

Lots of acreage in the country?

A compound for extended family?

Tell what & why. I'll share mine later.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

...because $1 million really wouldn't be enough to buy a nice condo in Manhattan.

... no bigger than, say 1800 sq ft - semi-secluded - with lots of trees and green space near a lake or river. :)

more than a million for that.

We saw a 100 acre horse farm with 100+ year old HUGE Stone house and HUGE stone barn for under $250,000 CDN about 3 years back.

but then again, with global warming, it may be just right.

I was down in Lousiville KY this past week. It felt like I was trying to breath chunky chicken soup.

You may keep the South, I'll keep the snow. Breathing that can't be good for you, and up here most of the insects have the common decency to die off for about 5 months out of the year, and for another 2 months they ain't doin' so well.

Hold onto it for a few years and then triple the investment.

Hey, Republicans shouldn't be allowed to have all the rich guy fun, should they?

I'd be happy with a small two bedroom bungalow with a nice backyard; the rest I would give to Habitat for Humanity or some other such group.

Then again, in Seattle, one million is getting to be the market value of a small two bedroom bungalow. :cry:

Which generates its own power and recycles its own water.

Someone recommended this site to me earlier. http://www.realgoods.com/

It would have shop space on the ground floor for our business. We'd live upstairs. It wouldn't be big, but it would be the greenest, most solar-panelled, geothermally heated, well-insulated little building you've ever seen. If a million dollars would stretch that far, it would have another apartment that I would rent out very affordably. Affordable housing is hard to come by 'round here.

...via eminent domain...:-(...

Maybe build some all-steel housing with some nice treehouses next to it.

probably buy one for myself and then get each of my kids and grandkids into a house of their own buy one outright or pay off existing mortgage) and see what was left. That would make more sense to me that spending all of it on one or two expensive homes.

and another one maybe in Jamaica or Tahiti.

No mansions for this family. We'd have a couple modest homes scattered about the globe. Of course Calif. could blow the whole stash of cash? A modest condo in San Diego, a time share on Maui, a modest home in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Probably near Ontonagon. And a modest home in ROussillon , France. I would hope the cost of all these units would come to less than $500,000. If had to live in just one place, it would be near Perpignan, France and use the interest to visit San Diego once a year for a month or so.

We'd finally have space to grow enough vegetables and fruits for us. We'd get some chickens, some goats to keep the grass low, and maybe some cows for milk and cheese. We'd would have enough space to adopt and/or foster dogs from the animal shelter. Maybe we could find a piece of land with a river going through to fish for trout :)

We are renting right now and have a very small garden. We grow some veggies, but we still have to buy most. Here in N CA, 1 million doesn't get you much, though.

on large property/acreage that I could preserve for future generations.

--overlooking a river somewhere in Maine...

"In the morning, mist comes up from the sea by the cliffs beyond Kingsport. White and feathery it comes from the deep to its brothers the clouds, full of dreams of dank pastures and caves of leviathan. And later, in still summer rains on the steep roofs of poets, the clouds scatter bits of those dreams, that men shall not live without rumor of old strange secrets, and wonders that planets tell planets alone in the night. When tales fly thick in the grottoes of tritons, and conchs in seaweed cities blow wild tunes learned from the Elder Ones, then great eager mists flock to heaven laden with lore, and oceanward eyes on tile rocks see only a mystic whiteness, as if the cliff's rim were the rim of all earth, and the solemn bells of buoys tolled free in the aether of faery.

Now north of archaic Kingsport the crags climb lofty and curious, terrace on terrace, till the northernmost hangs in the sky like a gray frozen wind-cloud. Alone it is, a bleak point jutting in limitless space, for there the coast turns sharp where the great Miskatonic pours out of the plains past Arkham, bringing woodland legends and little quaint memories of New England's hills. The sea-folk of Kingsport look up at that cliff as other sea-folk look up at the pole-star, and time the night's watches by the way it hides or shows the Great Bear, Cassiopeia and the Dragon. Among them it is one with the firmament, and truly, it is hidden from them when the mist hides the stars or the sun.

Some of the cliffs they love, as that whose grotesque profile they call Father Neptune, or that whose pillared steps they term "The Causeway"; but this one they fear because it is so near the sky. The Portuguese sailors coming in from a voyage cross themselves when they first see it, and the old Yankees believe it would be a much graver matter than death to climb it, if indeed that were possible. Neverthcless there is an ancient house on that cliff, and at evening men see lights in the small-paned windows.

The ancient house has always been there, and people say One dwells within who talks with the morning mists that come up from the deep, and perhaps sees singular things oceanward at those times when the cliff's rim becomes the rim of all earth, and solemn buoys toll free in the white aether of faery. This they tell from hearsay, for that forbidding crag is always unvisited, and natives dislike to train telescopes on it. Summer boarders have indeed scanned it with jaunty binoculars, but have never seen more than the gray primeval roof, peaked and shingled, whose eaves come nearly to the gray foundations, and the dim yellow light of the little windows peeping out from under those eaves in the dusk. These summer people do not believe that the same One has lived in the ancient house for hundreds of years, but can not prove their heresy to any real Kingsporter. Even the Terrible Old Man who talks to leaden pendulums in bottles, buys groceries with centuried Spanish gold, and keeps stone idols in the yard of his antediluvian cottage in Water Street can only say these things were the same when his grandfather was a boy, and that must have been inconceivable ages ago, when Belcher or Shirley or Pownall or Bernard was Governor of His Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts-Bay."

...thanks for a cool post...

a 14 - 15 hundred square feet house of steel and concrete with a tower maybe 30 or so feet high. then build my two stepsons an equivalent adobe in other parts of the yard. I love where I am right here.

pay off this house in Sugar Land. Small, tiny condo in Chicago. I month timeshare on Little Cayman. Remainder on a cabn in the UP.

in the Nevada desert where land is cheap.

use the extra to split between a maintenence safety net and a modest home.

The one my mom's parents told her she was crazy for paying $35K for in 1966. It sold for just under $1 million in 2004. (This is a pipe dream, the $10K annual property tax bill would be a budget buster for me.)

A plain but spacious tract home built about the time I was born, just south of the UC San Diego campus. One of my favorite features was the fireplace - A sturdy cinder block structure that divided the kitchen and dining room from the living room. We would burn a big oak log or three in it on the coldest nights. The cinder blocks would absorb and slowly let off heat. By dawn the place was toasty and our dishes were warm for breakfast.

Gonna need places to grow crops when Global warming dries out the heartland, and Or is in a good spot.

None of those ugly superficial McMansions for me!

I'd choose a place that might be a little cold in the winter (but may become more temperate with the inevitable global warming). A place with ample rain/snowfall but not too close to a large body of water (not a flood risk type place).

I'd want as much acreage for the money as possible. Then I'd build a house, greenhouses, and barn (for some goats and chickens) totally powered by solar, wind, and geothermal sources with either a propane generator or pellet stove (only as backup in an emergency).

Then I'd start learning as much as I could about organic farming and doing things like making my own soap, etc. I already own my own home-based business (medical transcription) that I can take with me wherever I live and do via phone lines and the internet.

I'd also use some of that money to buy a car with a diesel engine (maybe a diesel-hybrid if someone comes up with one in the near future) and start making my own biodiesel from used cooking oil gotten from restaurants.

Can you tell I'm a bit pessimistic about the future? I think $1,000,000 could go a long way if the right area were chosen and the land were cheap enough.

EDIT: Right now, I'm thinking someplace like Oregon or Washington state.

EDIT # 2: Maybe if enough of us moved to Idaho, we could turn that state blue. :)

but I don't want to live anywhere near where the ground moves or the mountains smoke.

here in coastal California this 1,000,000 dollars might buy
a couple of small condos or a modest duplex or, maybe, two small homes on
one lot.
And then you have the problem of losing certain tax deductions
if you allow (adult) family members to live in your property.

Tikki

.. idea. I'd buy a large acreage, away from utilities but with water access. I'd make sure it had a good watershed, and I'd build a 5 acre pond and stock it.

I'd build several dwellings, each modest in size and highly efficient in energy use.

I'd build a solar/wind off-grid electrical system.

I'd get a tractor and everything I would need in the way of tools to engage in medium-scale farming and gardening. I'd plant fruit and nut trees.

I could easily do all that with a million. :)

on the house I have. Improvements to the bathroom and a gray water system.

Oh, I only have a million? Well, maybe not as much extra insulation as I'd like.

Telegraph Hill is probably a little out of reach at $1,000,000.
Are we allowed to mortgage above that amount?

Tesha

after buying a spot of land somewhere in Oregon. www.earthship.org. I've always wanted one of those.

I've been telling my wife for years we'll live in an earthship someday. She still thinks I jest...

With a home either built or retrofitted to operate off the grid. Pond, orchard, garden area, plus woodlands for critters and trees. That wouldn't take a million dollars, so I'd consider a property with adjoining land which could be purchased and donated to the Nature Conservancy.

probably something around Asheville, NC (very liberal artist's community-and I could work on turning the state blue). Since I run a business out of my home it would be a fairly large place-but it's more than possible to build an eco friendly 3,000-4,000 foot home that has a smaller footprint than most 1,000 ft. condos! I would use rammed earth or straw bale, wind and solar, water collection systems on the roof, bamboo flooring, etc.I would want to be off the grid. I would grow fruits and veggies on the land, and possibly have a few chickens for eggs. I'd also donate some land to a few lower income apartment dwelling neighbors for organic garden plots of their own. The rest I would leave wild-if it had been a farm, I'd reforest sections of it. I've thought about it quite a lot, really. :-)

...about 2500' up the mountainside on the point above Matapalo (Osa Peninsula).

And it shall be called Bunnytown.

:)

but would probably leave out the BunnyTown part :-) ...

sP

:D

guess I would go with ProdigalVille or ProdigalTown..."a place to come back to" :-)

sP

:thumbsup:

and...see...with this whole lottery winning thing, I just KNOW it is going to happen to me...so I already have the land picked out and the placement of the homes on that land. So I am all ready...and now, thanks to you, I even have a name for it.

Have a good one!

sP

and decent annual precipitation.

Retirement = priceless.

A milliion would get you a basic not very fancy house in a Bay Area suburb.

My neighbor just sold 2 1/2 acres for just that of raw land with no utilities and no buildings. The people who bought it will have to build everything from scratch.

I'd build about an 1,800 sq. ft. log cabin on around 50 acres of land outside of Fairbanks, Alaska.

I'd use as many green & renewable building materials as I could. I'd also have some solar panels on the roof to help save energy.

Living in the lower 48 in the coming decades is going to become unbearable in the summer due to global warming.

I'd spend whatever was left over on necessary repairs and/or renovations, then bank the rest.

Good schools are a must.

Unless I can convert an RV to vegetable oil.

You see, I probably wouldn't spend more than $50,000 or so for the RV itself. Subtract a few grand here for beer and modifications to the RV (solar panels, satellite Internet), and I'll split up the rest to buy six nice (not exorbitant) houses for family and extended family and friends -- each one with an RV pad so I could visit them once a year for two months or so.

Now, here's the genius of it: After two months of me hanging around, I figure they'll GLADLY give me money for the gas needed to get to my next stop! ;-)

Definitely Hawaii

But I'm not sure where I'd get the other half million.

:)

couple of acres of flat property. I always wanted an indoor pool, and when I have money for a big house it's gotta have a room for a pool table, air hockey table and dart board. But I also love nature so I'd like to have a couple acres and in an area where wildlife frequents. I love watchin the deer, birds, rabbits etc..

A farm house and acreage close to the Congaree Swamp National Monument.

There would be enough room to welcome our other childless friends to retire and start a "commune" of sorts. I think that would be a nice option for retirement living.

JK :hug:

And I'd make it off the grid and all stocked up - just like the Crawford ranch.

We're already living that way. We could use a little more space at this point, though.

up in the mt's near a lake....:) At least a 5 bedroom log cabin....:) And since I'm dreaming here, a float plane, and a 24 foot bayliner...plus, some flight school lessons, so I can learn how to fly...:)

I would prefer to be near the ocean also, maybe 20 some miles from the NW coast...up in the mt's, with my wife...family...hmm, nice....

One would be on the rainbow river, a spring fed river in Dunnellon Florida. The second would be somewhere where it's cooler in the summer like Vermont or British Columbia.

Sailboat - I'd live aboard get my skipper's papers and teach people big boat sailing.

The Swan 42 is SWEEEEEEET.....



http://www.swanyachtbrokerage.co.uk/swan42_rosecarew.html

I believe the market is going at $1,000/sq foot right now, so hopefully a mil would get a studio in a nice area with a doorman, balcony, nice view and rooftop garden :)

This would be my second home, right? :D

With a few cherry trees and apple trees not too far out of town so Hubby can get to the office and hospital.

Then, we'd build a couple of houses on it, one for us and one for my mom. We'd invest the rest, waiting to see if we had to build any more houses for other family.

On a private lake in Connecticut, an hour outside Manhattan. The lake was stocked with little fishing pressure. I used to routinely catch largemouth bass over 20 inches, and 30 fish in an evening over 15 inches; plus beautiful brown trout 18 inches and over and a smattering of rainbows. It was a fisherman's paradise. And (again) just an hour outside of Manhattan (a plus in my book)!

During the winter the whole neighborhood was skating on the lake.

The house was nestled in a gaggle of beautiful old trees, with the lake in front of us and a "mountain" behind us. On top of the mountain was a deer trail (good or bad, depending on your take). In the back yard, facing away from the lake, we had a beautiful stone wall that held back the hill upon which we had exquisite professional landscaping until it turned natural.

In the house we had a two-person jacuzzi tub in a bathroom with alcove stain-glasses windows. Very relaxing. The previous owner had remodeled the kitchen and added top-shelf appliances. A huge sub-zero fridge, but best of all a Bosch dishwasher that could clean paint off your car if needed. Black marble countertops throughout. It had a custom cabinet with a passthrough to the dining room. The top shelf of the passthrough had etched glass cabinet doors in both the kitchen and dining room.

I used to sit in my office there and watch the deer eat our landscaping, or in our living room and watch the rainbow trout jumping in the middle of the lake.

When my nephew first visited, he exclaimed "I didn't know you lived in a park!". It was beautiful.

(Then 9-11 came, business changed coupled with huge medical bills for my adopted daughter, and well now I'm in the midwest.)

:)

Seriously, 1 million doesn't buy as much house as you'd think in SoCal.